Top 50 SF Books Meme

[seawasp]

Swiped from gridlore.

In this case "SF" means "Speculative Fiction", which encompasses Science Fiction and Fantasy (and some horror, etc. as well).

I do wonder where the heck this list comes from; there's stuff in here I'd have expected to be much farther down the list and others I expected to be on the list.

EDIT: Damn stupid markup tags, left out a bunch of boldface...

Bold what you've read, italicize what you started and couldn't finish, strikethrough what you hated. Asterisks for ones you really loved (more asterisks is of course more love!), and a "+" for ones you own.




1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien + *****
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov + ***
3. Dune, Frank Herbert + ***
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein +
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Leguin + ***
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson +
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke+
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. +
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov+ ****
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester + ***
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey + **
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card + ***
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson + ***
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling + ***
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson +
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice +
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny +
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement +**
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon +
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke + *
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven + *
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys +
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien + ****
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson + *****
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester + *****
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein + ****
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks + *
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer.

Comments

[shana.livejournal.com]

You haven't read Children of the Atom? The first part "In Hiding" was anthologized quite a bit.

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

When I did it (http://arcadiagt5.livejournal.com/14431.html#cutid1) it was mis-attributed to Time Magazine.

A friend of mine (http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/C56MNsWyJ2QU) tracked it down and it turns out to be a 2002 list from the SF book club:

http://www.sfbc.com/doc/content/sitelets/FSE_Sitelet_Theme_2.jhtml?SID=nmsfctop50

[denelian.livejournal.com]

you don't like "Childhoods End"? how strange...

some of these seem very odd... if i was gonna have Phillip Jose Farmer, i would have picked the first Riverworld... also, while "Lord of Light" is awesome, i think the Amber books are better...

this list is just confusing. also, there are newer novels that should be there. really.

also, why don't you like "Hitchikers Guide"? its the funniest silliest thing ever. and read "The Colour of Magic", its just beautiful

[kengr]

if i was gonna have Phillip Jose Farmer, i would have picked the first Riverworld...

Which is why "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" is on the list. That *is* the first Riverworld book.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

it is? i thought it was the SECOND.
really? that's the first one?
ok, i'm a dork. sorry lol. i don't have any of them anymore (stupid exroommates steal your books)

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Wow - I've read all but 5 of those. [Didn't read 9, 23, 31, 37 & 48] and own about half of the ones I've read.

Makes me realize I have to go thru the bookcases and do another weeding.

Of the above, IMO the most wretchedly-written of them is 'Interview' by Rice. ... and then a friend told me about the 'Twilight' series - which sounds as tho it makes 'Interview' look like fine literature. [shudders]

[seawasp]

Not that I know of, but it's possible I simply don't recognize the title.

[seawasp]

Not strange at all. "Childhood's End" was a gloomy dark book in which aliens wipe out the human race by assimilating them.

I don't like HHGTTG BECAUSE it's silly. Comedy is hard to do. There isn't a sitcom I can recall which was amusing, and most of the Hitchhiker "humor" was just plain stupid. And all the Pratchett I've tried was, well, similarly stupid. One joke that would be fine in a paragraph is hammered into a book.

[seawasp]

I didn't find "Interview" all that badly written. It just isn't really my cuppa. I stopped reading the series at "Queen of the Damned" when it became clear she wasn't bothering to think through logical consequences of actions, just writing for angsty vampire effect.

[odanu.livejournal.com]

Interview is the worst of Rice's vampire books, IMO. I've heard that Twilight is the best of its series... and I have NEVER before donated vampire fiction to my homeless shelter (I have a major weakness for vampire fiction of any cut). I donated Twilight. It's a great book... if you're a silly teenaged girl who thinks that being strong and straightforward is "icky". Bleah.

[odanu.livejournal.com]

I'm startled that you disliked Hitchhiker that much, especially given some similarities in your writing to Doug Adams. I'm curious what about it you dislike.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

aaaaaaaaaaaah... i see. yes, humor is hard to do. and everyone has a different idea of what is funny. i actually (don't tell!) like puns.

i know. its a shaming fact ;)

childhood's end is dark and gloomy. i like the ideal behind it though. then again, i know i am strange :) i cry everytime i read about how they blow up the moon.

the problem here, for me, is that i don't actually KNOW you, i have read some of your books and i read your LJ, but it makes me think i DO know you - i have this profile, or maybe persona, of you, that i've built up. it isn't really you, but i forget that fact. does this make any sense?

but "The Colour of Magic" is much less silly then much of the rest of pratchett. in my opinion (just mine, i'm no professional...) the only book by him that is better is "Small Gods". about a quarter of the stuff i read is "silly"; i need it. i hurt all the time and i currently am mostly confined to a wheelchair. silly is good for me.

which reminds me, i've been meaning to ask, when is Boundry II coming??? the first is currently my third favorite book, and i need more! (i am beginning to think i am addicted to paper and ink...)

[denelian.livejournal.com]

he answered that above, in response to me. i think what it boils down to is that HHGTTG just doesn't strike him has funny. honestly, i don't find most of it "funny", just silly. but i love it because it was THE fen thing in my family, my dad subjected me to the radio plays and the BBC miniseries when i was 9 or so, and most of the books have been converted to family in-jokes. my dad has been 42 for 12 years now, for instance. or when the new movie came out (convienetly on his birthday!) we bought him a new robe and a new set of towels and invaded the movie theater (all of us. dad, step mom, me and my three sisters, two with their husbands and kids, and my boyfried), with dad wearing the robe and all of us carrying towels and other random paraphanelia. i think if it hadn't become a family/nostalgia thing for me, it would have ended up being very "take it or leave it"
and with that rambling, i'm off to sleep :)

[seawasp]

All people with a REAL sense of humor like puns. Those that don't simply can't stand the pun-ishment. (one of my online nicknames used to be:

The PUNSlinger
^//==== HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
//

Online interaction is an interesting beast. In some cases you CAN get to know someone well enough to honestly say you know them, but it requires a lot of interaction which generally takes at least as long as the FTF interaction would.

Reading an author's books is an even trickier thing; how much of what a person writes is THEM? In some cases it's easy -- you can be pretty sure I don't share the moral values of, say, Virigar -- but which political stance(s) in Boundary are mine, which are Eric's, and which aren't either of us?

The persona of the "Sea Wasp" is yet another issue; I've been the Wasp online for longer than many people have been alive (I started using that name online in 1977, so the Wasp is 31 years old), and while "he" is very very close to the real-life me, he's not necessarily identical in all ways. At the least the Sea Wasp is distinguished by the fact that many of the Wasp's pronouncements will have been edited and thought over a bit more than what would be said off-the-cuff in a FTF discussion.

With respect to Pratchett, I've tried three separate books, and one short story, and none of them really worked for me. The short story was a Cohen story with him meeting a family of Bridge Trolls; the basic joke was something worth a page, a page and a half, and was hammered away at for what seemed like FOREVER. This was characteristic of what Pratchett I'd read. Also, a lot of his work seems to basically take real-life "stuff" and jam it -- rather clumsily -- into the fantasy milieu of Discworld, in a way that drives me insane.

Threshold, the sequel to Boundary, has to wait until Eric puts in his part. I handed in the first draft like a year+ ago; in the interim I had time to submit a proposal for another book (Demons of the Past) set in the Jason Wood universe and have it rejected, and then write an entire other novel (Grand Central Arena) and have it accepted, critiqued, and then finish and submit the second draft. Eric says he'll get to it very soon, however.

[seawasp]

I don't know what similarity you see, so I can't comment on that aspect of it. As Denelian says, it's basically silly stuff that wastes my time. I read stories for the story, while HHGTTG was essentially, as far as I could see, nothing but a sequence of running gags, and not particularly funny ones either. For the "funny" reading I did, Asprin's "Myth" novels (especially the first few) were much better.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

well, it seems the Wasp and i are the same age. also, Star Wars came out in 77... its officially the first movie i ever saw (i was 4 months old, the baby sitter canceled at the last minute, but my dad was determined. it explains soooo much about my geekiness)
someday we will meet at a con, and i will be able to figure out which is you, which is eric, which is someone else :) i corvered eric at MarCon a few years ago, and it is officially the Best Con I Ever Had.

eric is too busy :) i sit over here, waiting (im)patiently for more books from everyone, and it always boils down to the OTHER author on the project being busy. and i don't like to buy writers, it just makes it take even longer for me to get my greedy hands on the book. sigh.
Grand Central Arena. got it. yay! a new book to look for..........
i have no life. sigh.

i will leave off of pratchett now. i didn't realize that i was pushing it that hard. i have this habit of trying to get everyone to read and like everything *I* do. on the one hand, it's useful and i'm great for word-of-mouth advertising; on the other, i hammer at the bloated horse. i'm sorry, and am stopping.

[seawasp]

That was like my son Chris, who saw Independence Day as a baby.

You don't like to BUY writers? If you have enough to buy me, you'd get your books MUCH faster. That's called the "patronage" system, and I assure you that any millionaire or billionaire who wants to pay for my career will get my books much faster that way.

Or did you mean "bug" writers?

Yes, Grand Central Arena will be coming out, hopefully next year (though the earliest it could get out would be around October. I'll hope they can get it on the schedule then...)

No, you weren't pushing at all. I know Pratchett fanatics, and you weren't acting like one.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

yes, typo, "bug writers" lol

although, now that you mention it, thats an actual incentive for me to get rich... i can buy you all and chain you to word processors! bwa-haha-ha-HA!
erm. sorry lol

i will be watching for it!

[seawasp]

Now THERE is a different motivation for the Evil Overlord. "My favorite writers weren't producing enough..."

"So you captured them all and chained them to their beds and drugged them --"

"What, do I look like Stephen King to you? No, I conquered the planet and gave them all fine estates and servants to free them from these... these... 'day jobs'... that were wasting their time. Now I get new novels from my favorite authors every month!"

[denelian.livejournal.com]

oooooooooooooooooooooh... if only!
but you would all have to live in the same neighborhood. i'm too lazy to travel everywhere to entice you to new efforts. much easy if i can just walk next door to tempt Weber, then next door again for Flint, etc...

[seawasp]

Well, no, if you were the Overlord supplying all the money and comforts, we'd simply Email you the manuscripts. Or send them to Baen, who would edit and print them and send you the first copies. No need to nag us if you're the paying customer.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

you're right... if you were all easily accessible, i'd be bugging you and talking to you and totally distracting you...
much more effective your way.
but mine's more fun :) and, since i would be the Supreme Overlord (which is a title i would declare gender-neutral), you'd get paid just for entertaining me... hell, in the end, it might be more cost effective for you to talk to me, instead of publishing! not to mention the parties :-D